Lost
by VampireGirl1313
Summary: Written Shortly after I finished reading My Sister's Keeper. Annabeth is killed in the battle for Olympus and Percy decides to face Kronos alone. And, no Percy doesn't die. Rted M for language.


**A/N: I wrote this right after I finished reading My Sister's Keeper, so it's not exactly the happiest story ever.... Oneshot (unless I decide otherwise) hope it's okay!**

**Lost**

I opened the doors and stared into a sea of grim faces. I looked around for the blonde hair and gray eyes of Annabeth.

"Where's Annabeth?" I ask stupidly.

A few people shake their heads solemnly, a few begin to cry. Then the realization hits me.

Suddenly the crowd of people around me seems smaller, and smaller. Her face is all I can see, smiling, crying, annoyed.

"_Seaweed brain,_" I could hear her say.

All that. Gone. Missing. Taken. _Lost_.

Before I knew it I wan on my knees, tears streaming out of my eyes.

"NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed at nothing. I had known. I had known that we shouldn't have split up. She convinced me to do it. Maybe my brain was made of seaweed after all.

An our later I had managed to stop bawling and told everyone to go to their various stations and attempt to guard Mount Olympus.

"I'm going up," I told them when they asked where I was going.

"Percy!" I heard someone call out as I strode towards the elevator, where, I knew, I would break down again.

I turned around to see one of Annabeth's half sisters. Just thinking the name, Annabeth, made my eyes water.

Her sister carried the same dominating traits of the Athena children. The mysterious gray eyes. The same ones that had once stared at me, into my very soul, now looked at me from a different face.

"Percy, she asked for you. When she… you know…" she held out Annabeth's knife, the one Luke had given her when she was just a young child. _Her knife_, I thought. She never left it.

I nodded, not trusting my ability to speak and carefully picked up the knife that held nearly as many memories for me as Riptide.

There were a few quiet whimpers as I walked away on a suicide mission. They all knew what I was about to do.

I tossed a gold drachma at the chair at the service desk and stepped into the elevator. The button for the 600th floor appeared, gold and glamorous compared to its silver kin.

Soon I was riding up to what I was sure would be my death. I uncapped Riptide and held out Annabeth's knife in my right hand. She should've been here, not dead. This was the closest I was going to get to having her at my side.

Muzak plays in the background.

There was a classic "bing" and the elevator doors opened to the beautiful white stone city of Olympus. Only, it wasn't so beautiful anymore. The white marble didn't glow the way it did the last time I had visited, with… Annabeth.

The absence of nearly every god and goddess, major and minor, was emphasized by the sheer size of everything, each giant courtyard and building.

I slowly walked along what I knew to be the corridor leading to the throne room for the twelve major gods, my father included.

Before I reached my destination I heard a quiet crackling accompanied by a soft swishing sound. I held out Riptide and Annabeth's knife, ready for whatever was in the, what I knew to be, huge room.

I pushed open the door, ready to charge. Only to be met with a welcome sight of Hestia, tending to her fire, and Bessie in a giant floating bubble of water.

"Ah hello. I was afraid that you were Kronos, finally come here to take Olympus," she looked at my face, "what's wrong?"

"Wrong?!" I exploded suddenly. Tears reclaiming their place on my cheeks, "What's wrong is that Olympus is being attacked and almost no gods are here to defend it! What's wrong is that there are demigods, centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, and every other kind of creature out there on the battlefield! What's wrong is that Annabeth…" I stopped, realizing what I was about to say, the one thing I couldn't say, couldn't face.

Hestia seemed to be taking this in. "Come here," she said, "by the hearth."

I sat next to her, the form of a young girl.

"I'm sorry…" I said to her, "It was very… disrespectful of me to yell like that."

"No, I know what you feel."

"Then I feel sorry for you."

Bessie mooed sadly from inside her bubble. Everything was depressing and full of angst now. As it should be. Nothing could exist when the world's core was missing.

"Hi Bess," I answered halfheartedly.

Silence followed, a silence in which my emotions were going crazy. I was lost to the grief of loosing her, Annabeth. I couldn't think straight. I didn't even feel like I could stand straight.

I looked in the direction of Athena's throne, olive branches entwining the, what looked like, a desk chair. I turned away, setting my eyes on the coral throne of my father.

"You should get ready, Perseus," Hestia said suddenly. "Someone evil is coming." She inched backwards as her fire grew smaller.

Then I heard quiet footsteps and chuckling coming from barely beyond the door.

The doors burst open, nearly thrown off their hinges from a blast of sheer power.

I quickly and quietly got up and into the best fighting stance I could muster at the moment, tears dripping on the stone floor.

I was buffeted by the memories the sight of Annabeth's childhood friend, Luke — no, Kronos now — brought. He walked with an eerie grimace, clearly satisfied as to how the battle was progressing.

"So this is all the gods leave to stop me?" Kronos said in a voice so cold that I could feel it in my bones. "One minor god and a half-breed? I'm insulted." He chuckled menacingly.

A tear fell into my slightly open mouth. The salty bitterness reminded me of the ocean. The ocean. The ocean was with me.

"What's wrong?" Kronos said in a slightly more Luke-ish voice, "you get a cut from one of my monsters?"

"NO!" I decided that this day was an appropriate one for swearing, "Damn it Luke! DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!!!" I screamed the words at him.

"Oh? What have I done? Succeeded in taking over Olympus?" he mocked, raising one eyebrow.

"No." I said, holding Annabeth's knife up to the faint light. "You killed her," tears spilled down my face in a cascade of salt water. "You killed Annabeth!!!" I fell to my knees in anguish, a bad idea considering my sworn enemy was in the room with me.

To my surprise, the news I had relayed had an effect on him. The look in Luke's now cold golden eyes softened, then became very sad.

"Annabeth…" he said in his own voice, he was Luke again, his eyes loosing their cold golden glow. "Annabeth…. _Died_. Because of… me?" He looked up, eyes watering.

"Yes," I sobbed. "She died because of this damn war! This damn war that you started!"

"No… I couldn't have killed her. She wasn't supposed to die…" I looked into Luke's eyes, they were full of anguish. Pure sadness, a sadness that nearly reflected my own.

"It wasn't you. It was Kronos. He twisted your mind and made you what you are now," I comforted him, Luke, against my better judgment.

"Kronos…" he said and twitched, soon he was on the floor writhing in agony.

The only thing I could do was stand and watch stupidly. Soon he stood up, and I held Riptide in front of me, ready.

"Percy," Luke panted, "I can't hold him off for long."

I knew what this was getting at. A storybook ending.

"Give me her knife…" he fell on his knees and screamed in agony.

I held out the celestial bronze blade, again, against my better judgment. He could easily turn on me. I glanced at Backbiter, he had thrown it across the room when he fell. He took the knife with trembling hands. I knew that he could be faking the whole thing, that he could stab me at any moment, but. At that moment in time, I had nothing to lose.

Luke took the knife in his trembling hand, "the credit will go to Annabeth," he said as he stabbed himself in a most peculiar place, his armpit. Golden ichor spilled to the ground. His Achilles heel! I remembered, a tiny spark of hope flaring up in my mind. He had bathed in the river Styx, he had shown me his weakness, and ultimately destroyed himself.

"For Annabeth," he gasped as he fell to the floor, his eyes flashed to Kronos's gold, cold and enraged. Then returned to Luke's blue, now glassy and lifeless.

"For Annabeth," I agreed, tears still streaming down my face.

I didn't waste any time in the throne room, there was still a full on war on the ground. I had not expected to live. But what had I expected that turned out right today?

I rode the elevator down to the ground floor in a silent, mourning vigil.

The elevator door opened to show nearly the whole Camp's worth of demigods, relief obvious on their faces. They all seemed pleased that I wasn't injured… physically at least. That's all they could hope for.

The crowd parted for me and let me walk up to a slightly wounded Chiron in centaur form, clad in battle armor.

"I'm sorry, Percy," he said, but I couldn't drop the feeling that he had much more to say than just that.

"No," I said quietly, wiping the tears from my face. He didn't need to feel my misery. "Don't be."


End file.
